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Hardgore - aka "Horror Whore" (1974)

Dir: Michael Hugo

Our plot, such as it is, sees a young woman named Maria (Justina Lynn) arriving at the 'Fox Hollow's Sanatorium' to be cured of "Nymphomania with masochistic tendencies" by the mysterious Dr George ('John Seeman').
Now 'Nymphomania with masochistic tendencies' sounds great to me but according to her Guardian, who commits her, it's not doing her any good.

The Sanatorium staff seem just as bad as the patients though as the Nurse putting the sheets Maria's bed bends over and blatantly flashes her knickers at her , which is just too much for our Nympho, and before you know it they are naked and messing up the newly made bed with a spot of wild 'rubbing together of hairy crotches' and oral administrations…which continue in the shower.

After the fun the Nurse warns Maria that she should not stay here as there are terrible things going on!
And when the same Nurse turns up dead, with her throat slit, and Maria is then grabbed by a mystery man…it seems the warnings should have been heeded.
To her moist horror Maria learns she is being primed by Dr George and his evil staff for a pleasure delivering Satanic sacrifice. Can she escape? Can she swallow? All shall be revealed…

This obscure slice of 70's hardcore porn stands out from the crowd of 'High School'/'Doctor's Surgery'/'Bored Housewife'/'Cosmopolitan High Flyer' type movies that made up much of the 'porn chic' output of that era by throwing Satanists and gore into the sweaty mix. And it results in a porn flick that at least tries something different, which is always welcome of course.

Highlights are definitely Maria's supposed hallucinations of weird, psychedelic Satanic orgies.
The first of which features men with stockings on their faces pleasuring her and a cock being chopped off mid suck!

Other orgy set-ups are a mass of writhing Cultists on big pillows with the women wearing body stockings (with holes in strategic places) and men in ballet dancer tights! All scored to suitably 'Satanic' chanting, twanging guitars and hippie flutes.
Watching over the fun 'n' games is a red-robed figure in a gold and red fright mask who's getting his knob sucked.
This orgy sequence also delivers our first cum shots. One of which (the fright mask Cult leader) looks like it has help of a strategically placed tube along the cock to add to the flow over the woman's face.
All this ends with a non-explicit decapitation by guillotine, that makes up for the lack of gore in the fact that the executioner is fucking the woman as her head comes off!

The real twisted and just plain bizarre gem though is when Maria is taken to a dark room full of bloodied, naked female corpses (including one on a meat hook, and one on a table that is in the process of being screwed by a necrophilia loving Cultist) where she is tied up to a blood spattered wall and, after being ravished, has a funky hallucination of a mutated talking cock, talking dead girls, smoke blowing masks and a fleet of pseudo-cum spurting (all over her) cocks that hover in the air like the spaceships in the old "Flash Gordon" serials!

The sex is plentiful (at the end of the day, this IS a porn film before it is a Horror film), if not always thrilling when it's not being weird. And of course it's normally backed with psychedelic flutes and tinkling bells to grab that naughty, 70's 'Hippie' vibe.

One romanticised 'fantasy' sex scene definitely outstays it's welcome (scored with the kind of female vocal based music Ennio Morricone used on his early Gialli scores!), but the morbid context in which it is used is effective.

Away from the 'Satanic' orgies we have various couplings between Maria and the Nurses that are less than energy filled it has to be said. One 'Vibrator therapy' session is enlivened though when the mains connected vibrator is pushed into overload resulting in the hysterically warped image of a Nurse's smoking crotch! A scene made even better by the Nurse's worried outburst …"Quick! Call my Mother"! Call the Fire Department".

The gore is sporadic and is of course very cheap but it's effectively messy and very politically incorrect at times. Best scenes are a spurting throat wound and the severed cock that results in Maria getting a different kind of warm fluid on her face than she originally bargained for!
A film for all the Family this one!

Overall it's well made (one awful boom mike shot aside) and obviously everyone involved was relishing the taboo mix of sex and violence, blood and semen.
It has to be said that it all ends extremely abruptly though!
But while it's there, it's pretty much a must see for fans of weird and extreme cinema and it basically does what it sets out to do perfectly.
Just don't get any in your eyes...it stings